Bluets

One sentence synopsis... A series of loosely connected pieces of prose examining love and the loss of a relationship through observations about the colour blue.

Read it if you like... when books are described as ‘lyrical' and ‘poetic'.

Further reading... ‘Too Much and Not the Mood', Ocean Vuong, or Mary Gaitskill.

read this about two years ago and thought it was an incoherent mess. but after seeing continued praise for it and thinking about how my mindset and opinions have changed over the hundred-plus books i've read since then, i decided it was time for a revisit. i can now comfortably say i right the first time.

It's giving By Grand Central Station. Heavy on the Wittgenstein and Plato, but light on the narrative or thematic cohesion. Nelson makes the decision to restrict details of her lover to the type of sex they were having (for fear of displacing her memories with her writing, as with childhood photographs), but what results for me is a paradoxical combination of deep, powerful longing and nonchalance that I struggled to connect with.

At a job interview at a university, three men sitting across from me at a table. On my cv it says that I am currently working on a book about the color blue. I have been saying this for years without writing a word. It is, perhaps, my way of making my life feel “in progress” rather than a sleeve of ash falling off a lit cigarette. One of the men asks, Why blue? People ask me this question often. I never know how to respond. We don't get to choose what or whom we love, I want to say. We just don't get to choose.